Friday, March 20, 2009

Hot off the Presses - Stained Glass Book for SL™!

I just finished the latest book in the Livingtree Lecture series, based on the weekly lectures that I give behind the Texture Tutorial in Second Life®.

This one is a 76 page THiNC Book called Stained Glass for SL™. Like all the other books in the series, there's more here than I could cover in the one-hour lecture.

It starts with a discussion of how to make your own stunningly realistic stained glass panel in Photoshop.

Next, you'll learn how to painlessly make an Alpha Channel that has opaque leading and semi-transparent glass with varying levels of opacity. Techniques for doing this with a separate "leading" layer in your layer stack, with a separate "glass transparency" layer, or with nothing but a flat image of your stained glass are all covered; and you'll be delighted to know that the only selection needed for any of them is the super-easy "Command/ctrl click the thumbnail" trick.

Finally, you'll discover how to make four different kinds of Art Glass to use in the windows. (One more than was covered in the half-hour bonus session after the lecture.) When you finish you'll have Textured Glass (with any texture you want pressed into the glass,) Ripple Glass, Wispy Glass and Seedy Glass, in any color your heart desires, to use in your own windows.

(In case you don't want to take the time to make your own glass, I also have a few vendors up with various seamless glass textures in the Texture Library.)

All of this is available now, for the introductory price of L$100, in the Texture Library at Livingtree 113, 97, 25. (Book prices will all be going up in the middle of April, because there is a tremendous amount of work in one of these books.)

Come read the book for free, and buy a copy if you think you can use it!